Recruiting Needs to Burn
Dramatic much? Yes, I am, but I also speak the truth. I have been in the technical recruiting space for over a decade and I’m waving my white flag.
But, before I get too deep here, lets talk about the survey results.
I conducted an informal survey about the state of recruiting last week and right before I hit publish on this post, 560 engineers had completed it (70% completion rate!!!). I can’t get most engineers to keep their calendars up to date, but I can get 560 folks to complete a survey?! I was shook.
The number of people willing to give their time to complete the survey tells me almost as much as the data did. WE ARE ALL SCREAMING FOR A CHANGE.
Almost no one is having a positive experience being recruited. And if they are, it’s because a recruiter was simply forthright, helpful and didn’t low-ball them on salary (pretty low bar).
The #1 phrase referenced in this survey was that engineers did not appreciate when recruiters didn’t ‘do their homework’/’look at their work before reaching out’/’know who they were’. Y’all this was referenced at least 200 times.
As for ‘dream experience’ almost everyone (more than half) prefer to find a job through their own network.
Findings – We’ve got major problems.
First,
Y’all are perpetuating techs homogenous culture with your frame of mind.
How does one get into the ‘network’ to have work to put out to the ‘network’ enabling them to become someone a recruiter could even ‘do their homework’ on? It’s a vicious cycle that let’s a very small number of POC in.
Honestly, we need to change the way we find jobs entirely if we want to be as inclusive as we claim.
Second,
Burn it down.
The reputation of the recruiter is past the point of repair. The things candidates desire from a job search process and how recruiters are trained/what they are even able to give (ie recruiters aren’t engineers) is incompatible.
At some point organizations need to revamp the recruiting function. Hiring managers should lead recruiting for their own teams (they would have to be given the time to do this) and work in step with a people partner type who understands organizational dynamics, can balance the needs of teams vs leadership, are pros at communication, etc. I’m not saying there aren’t good recruiters out there, I’m actually saying that the best recruiters are ALREADY those people partners, just with a different title.
In the current world state it’s necessary to push ourselves to discomfort to enable change. And I wonder, is leaving recruiting ‘as is’ just another way for us to secretly/unintentionally(?) block out those who aren’t ‘in our network’ now?